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четверг, 23 октября 2014 г.

Kazakhstan, Chevron and the Oil Workers’ Plight

By Kirill Kovalenko

A lack of culpability between
company and state fuels workers’ rights suppression.

Tony Blair, recently awarded
“philanthropist of the year,” has also been in the news for providing services
of a different kind to Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev. A letter
has surfaced in which the former U.K. prime minster offered the president
advice on how to tackle the “Zhanaozen issue,” concerning the death of striking
oil workers on Kazakhstan’s Independence Day in 2011. This event was another
chapter in the history of resource industry development and its bitter
relationship with social and political development in the post-Soviet state.
Blair’s involvement is a typical example of a continued refusal to acknowledge
that there are severe faults in the labor system TengizChevroil represents.

In 1993, shortly after the fall
of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan signed a deal with Chevron over the right to
develop the sizable Tengiz oil field. There had never been a serious
exploitation of Kazakh oil resources under the Soviet Union, and the newly
independent government was eager to reap the potential economic benefits,
eschewing the resource nationalism which characterized Russia’s approach.
TengizChevroil was born and came to be seen as a model of East-West partnership
in the new republics.

Despite the tremendous wealth
of the oil field, the enterprise has been fundamentally at odds with the
well-being of workers and local communities. There is a certain duality to
TengizChevroil’s handling of labor disputes. While it has applied pressure to
dissolve the oil workers union, leaving the 24,000 employees effectively
without an organization to represent their interests, it has also distanced
itself from responsibility regarding corruption and labor disputes, claiming
that such matters were the concern of subcontractors. This is problematic when
one considers that Kazakhstan, as a state, is essentially a creation of Soviet
imperialism and since independence has pursued a strategy of suppression and
economic growth to maintain national unity.

This can all be framed within
the context of the “industrial colony,” a phrase used to describe enclaves that
develop within resource-rich but potentially unstable countries. The nature of
these colonies is one that cannot contribute to local development and will
inevitably cause social tension, and is more complex than the conventional
understanding of rent-seeking within petrostates:

“These enclaves, intended to
divide the foreign oil companies from potentially unstable situations, actually
promote the very social tensions and insurgencies against which they were
initially erected.”

The history of oil workers in
Kazakhstan seeking representation and improved conditions has been dismal.
Since the early 2000s, following every round of public discontent the state has
increased the force and efficiency with which it has struck back. Chevron,
despite its supposed commitment to contributing to local development,
ultimately did nothing. The industrial colony structure dis-incentivizes
company action because responsibility for atrocities is diffused between the
state and the network of subcontractors. There is little the workers can do
against a system in which there is so little clarity over who is responsible
for them and their interests. However, this does not stop them from trying.

On December 16, 2011, the
simmering agitation boiled over once more. Possibly inspired by the Occupy
Movement, a tent city was established in Zhanaozen and was subsequently
brutally dispersed by police using live ammunition. A media blackout was
enforced, and although the official death-toll stands at 16, sparse
on-the-ground coverage places it closer to 70, with over 500 wounded. On top of
this were mass arrests, brutal interrogations, and the torture of
demonstrators. There is an interesting contrast, as Peter Salmon describes,
between the congratulations the president of Kazakhstan was receiving from
world leaders on his country’s independence day saluting his undemocratic
20-year reign, and the petitions from worker’s groups around the world which
were largely ignored. Likewise, a group representing the U.K.’s largest unions
officially condemned Tony Blair while he was consulting Nazarbayev, telling the
president to keep a brave face and soldier on for the sake of progress and
development.

There is no easy solution to
the woes of Kazakhstan’s oil workers, just like there is no simple answer to
the issue of corporate responsibility in general. However, as the Kazakhstan
case shows, when the state is brutal and non-transparent, when worker
organization is non-existent, the company abrogates responsibility and powerful
figures in government and business respond with silence, the situation will
only get worse.

Kirill Kovalenko is a Masters
of International Relations graduate from the University of Melbourne interning
with the Royal United Services Institute of Victoria.

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YOUTH PEACE PLAN OF GEORGIA

This publication is produced within the framework of the project - ‘‘Support Democratic Participation of Young Women in Building Peace and Stability in Georgia’’ implemented in Georgia by International Network for Civil Development - INCD in partnership with Young Women Experts’ Network for Peace and Security (YWEPS) and with the financial support of the Embassy of Canada through Fund for Local Initiatives (CFLI).